AA1 Weird Behaviour

OK, so here's what has happened.

AA1 110 8GbSSD (Linux) died while my son was playing Linux games last weekend.

Won't boot up fully (get Bios splashscreen, then goes blank and hangs.)
SSD is showing as OK in BIOS.
Have sucessfully upgraded BIOS to 3310 (thanks to macles)
Have installed tinyXP thanks to Ron....windows tries to start, but I get random Blue Screen failures and error codes during the running, in normal and safe mode, and other random errors (ie no licence exists for this software)

Have sucessfully downgraded BIOS just in case (to 3109 as that is what tiny XP was imaged with)
No change....tinyxp still unstable
so now I try to recover Linux and see if that is more stable....
Have created Linux recovery USB Stick from recovery disk supplied by ACER.....recovery hangs on boot up

Have today bought an external DVD and tried recovery direct from Recovery disk. It boots, I get ASPIRE screen and can select the recovery option......Linux Kernel loads upto 100%...then recovery hangs !

So I figure I now have a shiny blue paperweight.

Could this be a failing / failed SSD ? Or may a RAM problem ? Don't want to throw good money after bad so would appreciate any advice you can give !!

Thanks

 

My brothers machine did exactly this. I disconnected then reconnected the ssd and it no longer showed in the bios. Dead ssd I'm afraid bud :cry:

 

OK.....just got the Samsung 1.8 80Gb drive.....took some brave pills and went ahead and fitted it ! (ie removed SSD and installed HDD.)
Power up looks OK, BIOS correctly recognises the HDD type and serial number.

But ACER Recovery DVD hangs when I try to reload Linpus OS. (same as it did with the SSD)

Tried to use a Wndows XP CD to load.....each time I run it i get random errors - 'CDBOOT:Memory overflow error', unable to locate file xxxx.xxx or it just hangs. Once (and only once) the XP disk went through loading the initial files, asked me if I wanted to install or recover....and when I chose install it immediately failed with a 'fatal exception' blue screen.

Anyone know how I can simply confirm that my new drive is OK, without a loaded OS ? If I do a DOS boot from unetbootin I can see A:, b: and Cwhich seems to be the USB stick)....but I don't know which is the HDD, or how to format it to prove that it is working OK.

I know i'm an ignoramus when it comes to these things, but I just want to get my little blue marvel running again ! (on Linpus or XP....I dont mind!)

ps I also tried rons tinyxp.....but it failed 92% through installation . I guess an 8Gb image doesn't work on an 80Gb drive !

Any help gratefully received !